After the success of Arsy-Versy, why did you choose recidivists from the Ilava prison as the story of your feature debut?
I wanted to face a heavy and crucial topic. Since I was a small boy, from the train to my grandmother, who lived in Ilava and from her windows I observed what was going on behind the prison´s walls. They evoked respect. I came back to fulfil my childhood dream. I expected to see something I had never encountered before, and, it was a true adventure, despite all the negative emotions which go with the issue of recidivism.
What was the most difficult part of the shooting? How did you manage to gain the trust of the main protagonists?
The trust itself was not a big problem. We put on prison clothes and with Juraj Šlauko [note: assistant director] and entered the cell in typical Ilava uniform. I think that this helped us gain certain respect. We sat at a table and started discussing the ways our film could look like. The most difficult thing is the ability to improvise in environments that are totally unknown to you; you have to process many inputs and impulses, and make decisions about particular scenes. We would shoot only two or three situations per day.
What projects are you working on at the moment and when will they reach the audiences?
I have just completed a film called Vrbovský Veter a documentary portrait of a peculiar and unique musician Braňo Jobus closely connected to his music festival in the Slovak town of Vrbové. We are in the middle of the shooting of COOLTÚRA, expecting to have it finished by next summer, and there is a third project I am working on, a film about Richard Müller [note: Slovak singer] with a working title 55, which should be premiered in 2016, for Richard´s 55th birthday.
MIRO REMO (1983)
Graduated from the Academy of Performing Arts in Bratislava in documentary filmmaking, later received his PhD. Arsy-Versy (2009) became his most successful student short film – it received more than 40 international awards (Festival dei Popoli, Hot Docs Toronto, Sheffield Doc/Fest, Plus Camerimage, KurzFilmFestival Hamburg, and others). His feature-length debut, Comeback (2014), which takes place in the most watched Slovak prison, will come to Slovak cinemas in October 2014. Miro is working on his upcoming projects COOLTURE and on a film about the Slovak singer Richard Müller with the working title 55.
FILMOGRAPHY: Comeback (2014)
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updated: 04.07.2014